Automatic Crafting Table
Recipe Usage To start the automated crafting, a template recipe should be placed on the crafting table. For example, to have a table automatically craft Wood Pickaxe, leave 3 wood and 2 sticks on the table in the normal T pattern. Next, a pipe leading to the Automatic Crafting Table should provide the items necessary to the recipe. A Wooden Pipe connected to the table can then, when being powered by an engine, extract the newly crafted item. The crafting table will provide newly crafted items so long as it is supplied with ingredients. The crafting table can also be used as a vanilla crafting table, and is useful because you can put some of the items in and come back later with the ingredients not popping out of the table. (similar to a Project Table). Note: the Automatic Crafting Table, just like the Project Table, doesn't function like a normal crafting table in terms of Shift-clicking. Interaction With Chests When an Automatic Crafting Table is placed directly next to a chest, it becomes capable of using the inventory of the chest as ingredients for crafting. This is slightly different than using a pipe in that the items never appear to enter into the table itself until the output is piped out of the table. For example, if crafting Planks from a single Wood, then one could put a chest next to the table filled with Wood (possibly piped into the chest) and the Wood would remain in the chest. Then, when a wooden pipe next to the table was powered, it would pump Planks out of the table, using the Wood in the chest as the source of the craft. This works with any item and any crafting recipe, and placement of the items in the chest does not matter as long as they are all present. If not all items are present either in the chest or in the crafting table itself, then the craft will not be done and the pipe will not get an output item. Note: Tables can only receive items from chests directly next to them; they cannot place output into chests. A pipe must be used to extract items. The chest inventory cannot be used when using the table as a normal crafting table; it will only be used when piping out out of the table. Fully Automatic Crafting System A simple example of a fully automated crafting system is to look at this Youtube tutorial. As stated above crafting tables interact with chests and piping (note piping must go into the top to get added to the crafting table inventory, although as it has limited space in it, it could be better to place items coming from tubes into the crafting table's adjacent chests. A wooden pipe connected to an engine will suck completed items from the crafting table, an adjacent chest can act as storage for the table and adding a pattern to the table's schemata will cause it to create that provided that it can 'easily find' the goods it requires and will simply stop producing at the time that it can no longer source necessary goods e.g. sugar cane for paper, paper for books, books and planks for bookshelves. Interfacing with Redpower2 Automatic Crafting Tables will not accept items put into them via RedPower2 Pneumatic Tubes properly, nor can crafted items be removed by RedPower2 devices such as Filters and Retrievers. However, mixing of the two mods can be accomplished with the use of chests as buffers. A chest immediately adjacent to the Automatic Crafting Table may be used as an input buffer, as the table will draw ingredients from it automatically. A redstone engine and Buildcraft pipes can then be used to pump crafted items into a second nearby chest that Redpower2 devices can then pull from. This allows the elimination of almost all BuildCraft piping in more complex machines, replacing them with much more compact and resource-efficient pneumatic tubing, Retrievers and Sorting Machines. Alternatively, you could use an Automatic Crafting Table MkII to directly connect to redpower devices or systems. Unused Items If an item is not consumed in the recipe, for example the Philosopher's Stone in Equivalent Exchange, another of the item in an adjacent chest will allow the recipe to work, and still won't consume the item. Multi Use Items When using items like handsaws and diamond drawplates, which can be used normally multiple times, the crafting table will consume a saw or drawplate each time it crafts making automatic block cutting very inefficient because of the amount of handsaws needed for each operation. Upgrades Automatic Crafting Table Mk II is an upgrade to the automatic crafting table. Notes Alchemical Chests and Energy Condensers placed next to Automatic Crafting Tables do not supply items for crafting, however a Deployer will, making possible a very efficient water-bucket supply as the empty buckets are immediately returned to the deployer for refilling. Bugs *When crafting with the Philosopher's Stone, even with another stone in an adjacent chest, both stones must not have a usage bar. *To get the philosopher stone in the automatic crafting table to not have a usage bar, you must first let the automatic crafting table make something with the philosopher stone on its own( so the one in the chest doesn't have a usage bar) and then manually craft something in the automatic crafting table so the one in the table doesn't have a usage bar(also do not remove philosopher stone from table after manually crafting)